What a night. At about 4.35 am this morning here in Christchurch we were shaken awake by one beauty of an earthquake. There have been numerous small & larger aftershocks.
A recent immigrant is saying to me how unprepared they have found Christchurch. This is despite New Zealand having Civil Defence & training, although when I was part of it I found many of those in the wardens role were unrealistic in how they thought of dealing in emergencies. For example in an exercise when it was supposedly a larger earthquake than this one they would not face up to fact that at some stage they would have to face a life or death decision & sacrifice some people to save others with a better chance. "We will save everybody was the answer". Nothing but a dreamer.
One good thing is somethings are obviously working well like police when they can get to things & the Mayor has done himself no harm in coming elections by collating information then passing it out.
But it took about two & a half hours before there was much in way of information came through radio or TV. Most of them was garnered by ringing friends & family & chatting to a passing police patrol checking on damage.
The other thing that struck me is my flatmate said they wanted door left unlocked for safety where as I said no locked as they were going back to sleep & there will be looting. They & others thought I was joking, but now there are continuing reports of looting in the center of the city at least. Which now have been said by police to just a few incidents.
It seems even when really we haven't been that badly hit the scum come out. But then it was the first thing I thought of after the initial checks were sorted.
Roads have been reported buckled.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Disaster Preparedness
But even now as the requests for limited movement on roads due to damage & to allow authorities to get checks done. Also to stop looting & other issues. All you are seeing is people going to check on damage, but at least initially no one seems to be listening & there is still a lot of what you would say is unneccesary movement.
I have just spoken to someone who is checking on water breaks & they have said their is panic buying of water & petrol stations are bumper to bumper as people are refueling.
Now I am going to ask all those people who laughed at me for have 27 litres of water in bottles stored away who was right? Not to mention my emergency food supply.
Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival
One modern issue is cellphone towers have had to switch to battery power whilst power is restored in many areas. That means the towers will run out of power in next few hours. So their is a request to minimize cellphone use.
Organize for Disaster: Prepare Your Family and Your Home for Any Natural Or Unnatural Disaster
Hopefully this is the wake up call New Zealand needs to start looking at things realistically, but it is likely in a week eveyone will have forgotten or think it has happened, won't happen again for another hundred years or so. But the big one that is overdue hasn't hit yet.
http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz
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